> A **first principle** is a basic [proposition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposition "Proposition") or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption. ## Benefits > First principles thinking helps us avoid the problem of relying on someone else’s tactics without understanding the rationale behind them. Even incremental improvement is harder to achieve if we can’t identify the first principles. > If we never learn to take something apart, test our assumptions about it, and reconstruct it, we end up bound by what other people tell us—trapped in the way things have always been done. ## Techniques - Socratic questioning - [[The Why Conversation]]: > If your “whys” result in a statement of falsifiable fact, you have hit a first principle. If they end up with a “because I said so” or ”it just is”, you know you have landed on an assumption that may be based on popular opinion, cultural myth, or dogma. These are not first principles. ## See also - [[Falsifiability]] --- ## References - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_principle - [[The Great Mental Models]]